trump and kim jong un ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images

Defining Diplomacy Down

Neither South Korea nor the US is anxious to demand from North Korea a full accounting of all its nuclear materials and weapons. But without that, real denuclearization cannot be carried out and verified.

NEW YORK – Some 25 years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard professor who in the course of his career served as United States ambassador to the United Nations and a US senator from New York, coined the phrase “Defining Deviancy Down.” The phrase was meant to describe a social trend in which behavioral standards declined over time to the point that what was once intolerable became broadly acceptable.

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